After lagging in wireless according to years, the U.S. has caught up with Western Europe and is now trying to take the innovation lead

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by Olga Kharif

It was a familiar refrain: The U.S., the birthplace of the Internet, was a wireless backwater. Even early in this decade, many viewed the U.S. as a developing mart, fit mostly for hand-me-downs from the more advanced Europeans and Asians. Unlike unified Europe, the U.S. market was fractured by warring radio standards and dotted with dead zones. Long after cellular was a way of life elsewhere, Americans however carried beepers and left messages saying to call confined apartment phones only in emergencies. America was to be pitied, and the competitive upshot was huge: The next great innovations in wireless, including the mobile Internet, were likely to arrive from outside the U.S.

Yet the based on competition moral is shifting. As the point of concentration of the wireless world moves toward Internet communications, the U.S. power in software, most notably at Google (GOOG) and Apple (AAPL), is pushing the U.S. ahead as a laboratory for wireless development. American users are attractive up, in addition. In the past year, the U.S. surpassed Western Europe in the number of subscribers to the high-speed networks known as 3G, according to consultancy comScore M:Metrics (SCOR). "The industry needs to stop talking about the gap between the U.S. and Europe," says Kanishka Agarwal, vice-president of mobile media at Nielsen. "We have caught up, and we have already passed."

The change has been dramatic. While a year gone 6% of Americans who bought phones purchased smartphones, capable of Web access and application downloads, their ranks rose to 16% in early 2008, according to consultancy Nielsen Mobile’s survey of 70,000 U.S. wireless subscribers. Over the same time, in Western Europe, the jump in recent smartphone buyers was smaller, from 11% to 17%, according to Nielsen.

The U.S. is at this time neck and neck with Western Europe in use of short text messages (SMS), multimedia messaging, and mobile games. More Americans, meanwhile, use mobile e-mail and instant messaging, according to Nielsen Mobile. Mobile Web browsing in the U.S. is also attached a tear, but it’s still a few percentage points behind the Europeans. Some 17% of Americans browse on the mobile Web, compared to 20% of Western Europeans, according to Nielsen.

True, the couple regions lag back the hottest Asian markets in data speed and mobile Internet usage. But the circuit in the U.S. has boosted the countrified during the time that an advanced wireless market and laboratory for Europeans as conveniently as Asians. "It used to be the biggest sandbox they could skip in was outside the U.S.," says Mark Donovan, senior analyst at comScore. "Now it turns out this is a big market."

At a renovated Nokia (NOK) lab in San Diego, 400 employees are tailoring Nokia’s products to AT&T’s needs. Japan’s NTT DoCoMo (DCM) and other Asian carriers are scouting Silicon Valley looking beneficial to topical sensitive startups to fund. European mobile software makers like Nokia-controlled Symbian are expanding their U.S. offices. The U.S. is fast becoming a fulcrum for mobile advertising, games, and other applications, says John Forsyth, vice-president for strategy at Symbian in London. "Our first turned westward completely in terms of talking to developers."

The biggest game-changers are Apple and Google. In July, Apple debuted its iTunes App Store, offering hundreds of applications from third-party developers in many countries worldwide. Easier to use than most previously suitable fickle stores, Apple’s effort has attracted scores of programmers who’ve already created more than 3,000 innovative applications (BusinessWeek.com, 9/5/08). After 10 years of efforts, Symbian has released fewer than 10,000 third-party applications. "Apple has fundamentally changed the industry from a point of concentration on hardware to a point of concentration without ceasing software and content," says Ken Dulaney, an analyst at consultancy Gartner (IT). "We subsist able to take a drive innovation for doubtless."

In June 2009 the automaker will launch in Europe a 30-mpg hybrid lection of its luxury S-Class sedan

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by Jack Ewing

German automakers lordliness themselves on heart at the leading margin of new technology, so it has been a atom of an embarrassment that—a decade after Toyota ™ launched the Prius—not one of them has a hybrid electric model on the market. But, with fuel economy and environmental impact pop a key concern for well-heeled buyers, Daimler’s (DAI) Mercedes unit is eventually poised to get into the cross game.

In June 2009 the company will begin European sales of a hybrid version of its luxury S-Class that, its engineers reply, will use 7.9 liters of gasoline per 100 km (or realize 29.8 miles per gallon). Launches in the U.S. and China will follow in September, Mercedes said on Sept. 11.

The carmaker hasn’t yet established a price for the hermaphrodite land yacht, no more than Mercedes Sales and Marketing Director Klaus Maier said the remuneration will be less than €10,000, or $14,000. The S-Class starts at about $88,000 in the U.S., though the top-of-the-line V12 costs a staggering $145,000.

Cynics might say that people concerned with respect to global warming and the immense transfer of wealth to oil-producing nations should simply buy a smaller car. But Mercedes executives don’t think their purchaser base has quite reached that stage of enlightenment. "Not everyone can drive a Smart on vacation," Maier says. "We need solutions on this account that big cars."

Why did it take so long for Mercedes to have into the mule market? One reason is that Mercedes, as well as BMW (BMWG.DE) and Volkswagen (VOWG.DE), have concentrated steady optimizing diesel engines. BMW’s diesel Mini and 1 Series try to equal the Prius for gas mileage and carbon dioxide emissions. Daimler says its BlueTec delineate of diesel SUVs, launched in the U.S. over the summer, account for 20% of Mercedes SUV sales in the people, a positive percentage considering that diesel traveller cars make up only 4% of the total market.

From an engineering point of view, diesel is the better technology because it offers comparable gas mileage to a hybrid—or even superior mileage in highway driving—with less weight and cost. But the success of Toyota’s luxury Lexus hybrid models showed that gasoline-oriented U.S. buyers require hybrids. "Mercedes said: ‘If you want to save the planet, buy a diesel,’" says Christoph Stürmer, Frankfurt-based auto analyst at Global Insight. "They were right in their have way but proven wrong by the agency of the market."

The S-Class is not a so-called full hybrid—it be able to’t run solely attached battery power. Rather, the electric motor supplements the six-cylinder, 279-horsepower gasoline weapon, improving fuel economy by providing a boost while accelerating. The car also recovers energy which time braking, feeding it back into the battery. However, Mercedes has included some innovations that it hopes will set the S-Class hybrid apart from Japanese competitors.

The mainland innovation is the lithium-ion battery. Developed along by German components supplier Continental (CONG.DE), the battery weighs less and takes up less space than batteries used by competing hybrids. Slightly larger than a conventional auto battery, it fits under the hood and does not reduce the amount of space in the remainder of the car. All told, the hybrid components including an relating to electricity motor add a modest 75 kg (165 lb.) to the total ponderosity of the car.

The battery employs the similar chemical principle as those used in laptops and mobile phones, but Mercedes execs insist there is no danger of the overheating that has plagued consumer electronics makers. In the unlikely event that the battery gets too hot, says Oliver Vollrath, strategic director of the S-Class hybrid project, the system determine shut down automatically. In somewhat event, Vollrath says the car’s power-management system precludes any such problems. "You can be sure that what happens in laptops won’t be a problem in automobiles," he says.

Besides being further efficient than competitors, the battery also helps Mercedes meet its long-term goal of offering better mileage without any sacrifices in performance and comfort. Following the S-Class launch, the company aims to add at smallest one hybrid model a year. "We have to ensure that humbler classes in six years determination regard being able to drive a self-sufficient car exclusively of sacrifices or a bad conscience," says marketing chief Maier.

Fuqua B-School’s new between nations MBA program will be conducted in six cities abroad. First program will have being in London, New Delhi, and Dubai

by Alison Damast

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When Blair Sheppard became dean of Duke’s Fuqua School of Business a year ago, he said he wanted to expand the school’s global presence through alliances abroad. On Sept. 15, Duke is doing so in a big way, announcing the launch of a new global program that will bring students to six new overseas campuses in what Sheppard says is a complete rethinking of how global programs work.

The stretch—termed a "global campus reticulated"—is designed to focus on regions that Fuqua School believes will be the "economic and cultural hubs" of the 21st-century good husbandry, Sheppard said in an meeting last week. Accordingly, he said, the school is developing new facilities with partners in Shanghai, New Delhi, Dubai, St. Petersburg, London, and Johannesburg.

The partnerships—with other academic insitutions, municipalities, and individuals—be inclined allow Duke to establish five overseas entities in time for the launch of the program next summer. The primitive partnership to be announced is in Russia, through St. Petersburg State University’s Graduate School of Management. The remainder of the partnerships will be announced in coming months.

Sheppard aforesaid the program sites were decided from one side a uncombined calculus: the places "to which place you have to be to be changed to part of the future in a significant way."

Sheppard, formerly head of Duke’s Corporate Education programs, criticized existing business academy approaches to global education as "broken," statement that schools remained regionally oriented and often decided where to place global programs based on "where it was easy to go." He said Duke’s set is to "bed" the programs in another country’s local culture and business community through research and local service programs.

At each global outpost, through the exception of South Africa, Duke plans to run MBA classes. All six locations will have a Duke corporation education program, charged with execution education through open enrollment, research centers, and common outreach. Other schools at Duke, including the Nicholas School of the Environment and the Duke University School of Law, will collaborate with the various campuses.

The initial program to be adapted as antidote to international facilities is the tutor’s Cross Continent MBA program, which will launch its Class of 2011 with every orientation in London in August 2009. Following that, students desire be separated into sum of two units groups that will earliest spend six weeks in either Dubai or New Delhi and later switch countries for the helper term. The nearest campus residencies inclination take place in St. Petersburg and Shanghai. At the end of the program, students will return to Duke’s Durham campus to complete their electives and concentrations. All students will be taking the core Duke MBA classes and electives, though students can choose to pursue optional concentrations in finance and health-sector conduct.

The school hopes to attract a varying group of students from altogether over the world, particularly from the countries with which Fuqua is partnering. Those considered for the program will be junior managers, ranging in age from 25 to 35, with three to 12 years of work experience, the school said. The program will require to be paid $115,900, which does not include pass among the contrary campus residencies.

The ambitious Duke plan is a new take on the increasingly popular global MBA fashion, embraced in recent years by schools ranging from Insead to University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business. Duke’s plan is noteworthy for the cause that of its view, says Jerry Trapnell, vice-president and chief knowledge official at the Association during the term of the Advancement of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). Most business schools with global MBA programs tend to send students to two or three campuses, not five or six, as Duke is intending, he says.

"This is the most I’ve heard of in single in kind program," Trapnell says. "It’s some other greater step in the direction of taking business education to another level with multiple locations."

The program will replace the school’s existing Cross Continent MBA program, which was launched in 2000. The program currently is conducted at three global campuses—in Shanghai, New Delhi and Brussels. Besides the new campuses Duke is developing, two fresh classes will have existence added to the Cross Continent MBA’s core program, including one on civilization, culture, and economy, and another upon global markets and institutions. And unlike the previous program, which was eight terms over 20 months, the new program decree cover the course of studies in six six-week conditions over 16 months.

Expanding the program to five campuses presents more logistical problems. Sheppard said he is continually in the process of figuring out how to staff the campuses, each of which will need at minutest three or four administrators and two to three faculty member on site. Another difficulty is establishing the physical space for each program and getting totally the sites ready for next summer. Finally, there’s the task of recruiting students for the program.

Despite that, Sheppard said he remains confident the school will be able to pull it off in time on this account that classes to begin next August.

"I think it’s fair to answer we’re doing this in a fashion no one has before," Sheppard said. "It’s shaky, but I’ve conferred something crazy formerly or twice before."

Web sites are building communities—and businesses—on the extending do-it-yourself craze

by Heather Green

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It’s an overcast December afternoon, but the Pop Up Community Center in downtown Manhattan is buzzing. Spread along a white woody table, a half-dozen people are ironing pliable bags together to create a fabric made of recycled matter. Others are bent over sewing machines, meander the soft into colorful tote bags, wallets, even pillows. Occasionally they turn for advice to Anda Lewis Corrie, who is chief this workshop on the body transforming old plastic bags into useful objects.

Just some other community service project? Not quite. Corrie works in marketing against Etsy, an online marketplace where people sell their own handmade crafts. And this workshop is all about sharing the do-it-yourself (DIY) actual feeling—an impulse that Etsy and a number of other companies, large and moderate, have converted into a sizable business. Etsy won’t reveal its revenues but expects to turn a profit early next year on what it takes in from a 20 cents-per-item listing fee and the 3.5% commission on goods that merchants put up to sale through the locality. In 2007 those merchants sold 1.92 million items worth a gross amount of $26.5 a thousand thousand, according to Etsy. The 2 1/2-year-old startup produces online videos, hosts virtual town halls, and runs workshops with the goal of persuading more folks to instil each other to create and sell crafts on Etsy. Since it’s a manner of eBay (EBAY) for handmade crafts, the more people who sign up to sell their handiworks without ceasing the site, the more fit the company does. Says Corrie: “We want to help people make a living making things.”

Although the craft craze is well-established, with sales hitting $31 billion in 2007, it’s taking off through a vengeance online. Hubert Burda Media, Germany’s 58-year-old sewing-magazine and pattern giant, relaunched its English-language BurdaStyle Web site in July to share sewing patterns that can be modified to act new designs by the site’s visitors. Sebastopol (Calif.) publisher O’Reilly Media launched Make and Craft over the past three years; they’re print and online how-to magazines that yerk examples from the intricate videos and purpose blueprints that readers submit online. At the site of British startup StyleShake, users design and work together online on their own cocktail dresses, which they can send to the company to have turned into clothing for them.

Many of these companies say they trace their lineage to the open-source technology movement formed in the ’90s by computer programmers who wanted to create software anyone could build upon. Rather than one expert teaching people how to perform matter, the open-source move underscored how groups of people could share expertise and build on that knowledge. Now this mindset is rapidly spreading. Says Elizabeth Osder, a visiting professor at the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Southern California: “There is this resurgence of interest in DIY and afterward the craving to put into bundles up pieces of information and share them in an open-source way.”

For Burda, the timing couldn’t be improved in health. The crew wants to occasion a virtual DIY community beyond Europe. It’s the biggest exemplar vender in that place, yet it claims less than 2% of the U.S. market. So while Burda doesn’t profit from the patterns that are pulled from its Web site, it hopes vocable of rant will boost sales of its other patterns in the U.S. Each week Burda publishes a different pattern online, for items such as wide-leg pantaloons or a pencil skirt with pleats. They appear as PDFs that visitors can copy to their computers or print disclosed. Sewers be able to alter the patterns as they fancy, and in that place are no restrictions on selling finished clothing.

The BurdaStyle community gets into full open-source swing after each modern archetype is posted. Members swap written tips and post photos in the digital court of justice and group blog on how to alter the designs. They even constitute detailed, step-by-step move smoothly shows demonstrating how to change the collar adhering a jacket or turn pajamas into maternity wear. Relaunched five months ago, BurdaStyle has about 29,000 members and clocks 1.5 million page views a month.

ANKARA (AFP) - At least one person drowned and 13 were injured when a ferry carrying about 150 people and 75 vehicles sank late Sunday off the northwestern Turkish city of Bandirma, the CNN Turk recent accounts canal reported.

Author and consultant Paul Bodine answered questions from B-school applicants about the admissions process. Here’s a copy of the online conversation

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Paul Bodine

Business school applicants are always looking for advice and strategies to write pleasing essays, perform well on the interview, and breed into their dream business school. Paul Bodine, author and admissions consultant, recently fielded questions from BusinessWeek reporter Francesca Di Meglio and the public at a acquire a livelihood chat occurrence through applications and getting accepted to top MBA programs. Here is an edited transcript of the chat by information adhering everything from the moment of campus visits to deciding how to handle the failure essay properly adhering an application:

PaulBodine2008: Starbot asked approximately applicants with weak postcollege extracurriculars getting into top-five business schools. [The question was accidentally deleted from the system.] Business schools make out that IB and consulting folks, for example, have to work ungodly hours, but poor post-college extracurriculars is still a weakness that you urgency to make up for for, especially at the rise aloft schools. If you have specific reasons, be pleased with a family crisis, then you should argue that in an optional essay. Most of my clients who get into the top schools have healthy undergraduate as well as strong postgraduate [extracurriculars].

Sandip: I want to apprehend how much pith adcom gives to a GPA in an application of a person through six years [of work] actual presentation.

PaulBodine2008: The more work experience you have, the less adcoms care about undergrad GPA. If your GPA is 3.0 or higher and you have a shrill (say 620 or above) GMAT, then you should subsist fine.

Of run after, at the top schools any blemish could be a intellect to ding you in favor of someone else, in such a manner it also depends on where you’re applying.

Soni: When asked about failure-related topics, is it advisable to draw up personal or professional?

PaulBodine2008: Great question. It depends on what material you’ve used in the other essays in that essay set, as well as which of your failures are the strongest stories (for example, what taught you the most?). Given two miscarriage stories of equal power, I might choose the personal one because it reflects less negatively on your career profile.

DWright: How important is it to visit a school’s campus in the sight of applying? Does it appear since a "lack of influence" if you do not visit?

PaulBodine2008: Schools will tell you they don’t attention if you visit. But if you living in the Bay Area and none made it to Satnford’s campus, that will hurt you. Talking about your campus visits is one of the ways you can personalize your business school discovery suit—for example, to discover the schools that you be delivered of made extraordinary strain to get to apprehend them. But INSEAD would not penalize someone from Mumbai for not making it to their campuses.

Starbot: From your experience as admissions consultant, do you see MIT Sloan’s] preferred solicitant profile to be different from perhaps Wharton’s or Columbia’s]? For example, would it be fair to say that MIT Sloan prefers those through Engineering/CS lettered or career backgrounds, and have career goals in manufacturing/IT rather than banking/PE?

PaulBodine2008: No, I don’t think MIT Sloan has preferred applicants in conditions of applicants’ academic or professional background. They want applicants to be assured of about their strengths in multiple areas. The preferred applicant profile at MIT is someone who makes a strong case that MIT’s resources fit happy with their career goals.

Soni: When asked to prepare a presentation about self, what should be the approach?